When was my file modified In Linux it depends 16796

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, DFS wrote on Mon, 20 Jun 2005 17:23:34 -0400

Obligatory. I've seen it used in other newsgroups, mostly for crossposted missives. For example, if one crossposts to, say, rec.pets.cats, one might include a line

Obrec.pets.cats: My cat Fluffy was *ssssooooo* cute today...

or some such. (Disclaimer: No, I don't have a cat, fluffy or otherwise. My idea of a pet would be manufactured by Commodore... :-) )

I'm beginning to wonder what money *is* anymore. Time was when one could exchange that washable linen paper one carries around in one's pocket for actual pieces of gold at a fixed rate. (One still can, of course, by buying it at prevailing market rates. It's not quite the same thing, though.)

Ditto for an OS. Time was when an OS was clearly defined; it was basically a wall with holes (INT traps for the most part, though the exact instructions varied from system to system) between the application and computer system software that among other things managed the system's devices. Nowadays, an OS is more or less a contract, if that, and can be anywhere in the user-system space at all; the application procedural interfaces are defined by the vendor, one calls them, and one calls the set of APIs an OS.

Feh.

You forgot software vendors-developers. It's a regenerative cycle; the monopoly that is Windows is the biggest market, and the software vendors go after the biggest market, making it even bigger. Linux is #2 in this market, if not #3 (though it depends on what Apple's been doing lately). Linux isn't doing too badly in spite of that, but if it loses The Big Mo, things might get a little messy as we tear each other apart.

There's even a hint of something with a rather interesting odor. Windows, as you've no doubt noticed (at least as far as many denizens on this group are concerned) has many major shortcomings in the security department. These are slowly being fixed (well, OK, FSVO "fixed") by Microsoft, but in the meantime a vibrant third-party marketplace exists to buttress the OS -- security, disk-fixing, and other such.

Linux will have (and probably already has) a different marketplace.

My personal hope: Windows dies a slow rest and the apps have time to migrate over to Linux, which in the meantime slims down, tones up, proves itself via code analysis (can't be done 100% but maybe 90%; the halting problem is a well-known failing, but there are many heuristics available for improving code), and ultimately merges with FreeBSD, HURD, and anything else that's still around at this point, making for a one true unified system.

An alternative would simply be to codify the standards properly and then have several variants around. These variants would implement the standards with *no* embracing or extending (unless the standards allow such) and periodic surprise checks would ensue to keep them honest.

Feh. My fellow humans are a weird lot anyway. :-)

As it is, the Amiga is dead. Long live Windows until it rots (which won't take long) and we can replace it with something that actually works properly. :-P

I can live with FreeBSD, for example, though I'd have to see how well it works with such things as Eclipse, Netbeans, and Java. HURD's not there yet.

-- It's still legal to go .sigless.